Friday, May 24, 2013

For instance, by mining the internet. Everyone knows that the internet is great at filling the spaces between productive times with all manner of interesting subject matter.

Do any Google images search and get back to me.

Sometimes children provide material. My daughter likes to play Would You Rather? It's a game where you pose a choice between two impossible scenarios. We've been playing Would You Rather? for years now. We've been through stages of this game that range from the nonsensical (Would you rather be an alien or a toilet?) to the gross-out (Would you rather drink twelve jars of pee or eat twelve jars of snot?) to interesting and thought-provoking. An example of our most recent game:

Her: Would you rather be a raccoon with a super-smart human genius brain or a nerd human with no brain at all?
Me: Uhhhh...
Her: You have to choose!
Me: Uhhh...
Her: MOM! You're terrible at this game!
Me: Uhhh...
Her: I'm going to watch some TV now.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Remember the Publisher's Clearing House? The big Ed McMahon sweepstakes? You send in an entry form and six months later the prize patrol rolls up to your house and they give you a huge check and you win a million dollars and you scream and cry and are most certainly dressed to clean toilets and/or are nursing a forehead pimple that rivals the one you had for senior prom.

Who still enters that?

Besides me and my Grandma, of course. One of us is going to win the million. These days, they throw in five thousand dollars a week for life too. My daughter says that if we win the prize that Daddy could quit his job.

To which I respond with a scoff. Staying at home is MY gig.

So if you haven't entered this year, don't worry. You wouldn't have won anyway. To prepare, I'll be sitting in my chair with my lipstick on, waiting for the prize patrol to come with my check.

Friday, May 17, 2013

When I started writing this blog I had a hard time coming up with material to write about that wasn't embarrassing or too personal. I knew that my mother, pastor, and quite possibly old boyfriends would be reading. I didn't want to give too much of myself away.

I got over that quickly, as it turns out that I don't really have too much to say that isn't personal or embarrassing. My need to write edged out any shame I might have from my propensity to reveal TMI.Plus, it's refreshing to air out your thoughts to people like strangers and nosy acquaintances who will never admit to you that they read your blog like they're reading your diary. And I realized that not many people read it anyway. Some people just aren't into blog reading.Snobs.Anyway, I amuse myself, and during one little flurry of self-entertainment made up this joke that I brought out a few times in mixed company. It's awkward and no one but me liked it or got it, so I put it out on the blog to get it some love.So far, it's gotten like seven hits. From me, probably.But I am approaching a pretty big milestone birthday this weekend, and this famous joke that I introduced three years ago is appropriately timed.Evidently three years ago I was worried about this particular birthday, and now that it's here, I'm more intrigued that I am turning this age rather than dreading it. I keep expecting to turn into one of those women who they feature in magazines with the headline Fabulous At Any Age!A lot of time is spent in my own little fantasy world, I guess.So here it is. If you want to see it in all its glory, you can go back to the original post. But why would you? It's right here:

I went to the gym two days in a row this week, after taking the summer off to goof around at home all day. Now I am stiff and sore and I feel Old. And then this just happened:

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Not because we are allergic, or because we are between pets,
or because we live in a place where they don’t allow pets.

We don’t have pets because I don’t like keeping pets.

And because my job is managing this house and the lives of the people who live in this house, I choose for our family not to have pets. The three animals I take care of are enough
work, thank you very much.

Now, look. I am not
anti-animal. Not really, anyway. I don’t kick cats off of my front porch and I
don’t set traps for rabbits. We feed squirrels,
if you want to know the truth. But I’m
not posting pictures of abused dogs and cats online and demanding justice and adoptive homes for them, and I’m not taking in strays I see wandering the
neighborhood.

I will love your dog at your house, pet your cat and will
even allow him to crawl into my lap.
There’s something about the warmth of a pet who settles next to you,
totally trusting and not caring that you are anything other than a comfy
cushion to perch upon.

We’ve had fish since then.
Hermit crabs. A kitten my father
rescued and we raised for six months.

These relationships ended in death, with the
exception of the cat. All the goodbyes
were hard in different ways. The fish
died ungracefully (floating sideways in a bowl with no warning, only to be
scooped out and unceremoniously flushed), the hermit crabs died mysteriously (there
were two, and what happened to the
big one’s claw?), the cat was exiled (we received mildly threatening anonymous
mail after he was spotted in several of our neighbors’ homes who employed
doggie-doors), and the dog’s death was tragic, premature, unfair.

Our children still ask for a pet. Any pet.
They promise to take care of it.
I reply that we can get a pet when daddy quits his job and I find one to
support us. They can all share the
pet-keeping chores while I work sixty-plus hours a week. They will be in charge of the house cleaning,
vet appointments, kenneling when we go on vacation, walking, poop-scooping, bathing,
feeding, and shampooing of carpets when the pet has an accident. Their pleas for getting a pet eventually
cease.

They rattle off the kinds of exotic and domesticated pets
they will keep when they live on their own.
They have given them all names. I remind them that I won’t pet-sit.

They continue to be disappointed. I frown at my husband when he joins my
children’s pleas for a pet. I am the bad
guy, the ogre who disapproves of their frivolity, the one who keeps hostage the
happiness that will only come from owning a pet.

I am strong, and we are still pet-free.

But the warmth and comfort of a dog, the deadpan silliness
of a cat, the gleeful chirp of a bird, the delicate beauty of a fish as it
glides through the water – I still enjoy it.

Monday, May 13, 2013

I was shopping away in Target, buying up soda in multi-packs like a boss because they were on sale for like under five dollars, which is ridiculous but there it is.

I looked over and there was a young mama pushing her cart and holding a teeny baby over her shoulder.

The baby seemed to be looking at me.

What a beautiful baby, I said.

He was a beautiful baby. He was little and pink, fuzzy on top, bright and shiny and trying to lift his head off of his mom's shoulder with all of his teeny tiny might. He was dressed in only a onesie, that wonderful piece of baby clothing that every mom has hundreds of but somehow when your kids are babies you never have enough of them.

Thanks, she smiled. He was hot, and was screaming in his seat so I just took him out of it. And now, look, he's fine.

How old is he? I asked. Just three weeks, she replied.

I smiled back at her. He's perfect, I said.

She thanked me and I walked on through the store. I remembered when our kids were babies. None of the sleeplessness or frustrating unknowns that fill most days as a new parent came to the surface. Only the memories of the warmth and weight of a little sleeping body, the simple acts of feeding, bathing, dressing, and holding those babies were in my mind. In an instant, tears started to form in my eyes. My throat tightened up a little. Those were such sweet years.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Before having children I heard that mothering is the hardest
job in the world. I didn’t
know what that meant, and I sure didn’t believe it. My mother made it look so easy. I needed to educate myself, so I read
books and asked questions of every mother I knew. It was an overwhelming project. Every mother has advice, a thousand
anecdotes to share. I felt
like I absorbed every piece of information out there. I was prepared. Then my children were born.

I was not prepared. Mothering really is the hardest job in
the world.

Before becoming a mother
I heard that having children was like having your heart live outside your
body. I didn’t
understand. Love had
happened to me before and it didn’t feel like that. Then my children were born. I understood, but I felt as if I
couldn’t provide for them sufficiently. Every
feeling they had was my own, a hundredfold. I desired to anticipate their needs,
prepare for those needs, and execute perfect solutions for those needs. I tried my hardest, and failed every
single day.

I worried that I was the only one on the brink of disaster
each day despite the consoling thought I hung onto since the day my children
were born: I am one of billions of women who had done this job with varying
degrees of success. Despite
the evidence that I was in good company, I doubted my skill set. So I connected with other mothers and
found myself in the fold of a group of warriors who bravely slogged through the
mothering trenches with me. We
helped each other develop parenting skills, weed out unproductive endeavors,
applauded achievements, and encouraged each other through failure. These
mother-warriors became wonderful friends.

I continued to educate myself to assuage lingering doubts
that I was capable of effective mothering. I read that “Children will thrive
despite best efforts or worst mistakes. Don’t strive for perfection, only
adequacy.”

This advice suited me; I was never one for herculean
efforts. I adopted a
strategy for baseline everyday mothering: survival. If the kids were fed, clothed, and
reasonably clean at the end of a day, it was a rousing success.

I learned some things: there is no limit to the messes that
children create, but mothers must be persistent in teaching them to clean
up. In potty training,
mothers should train themselves to put potty training first. Children’s television programming is
an exasperating blend of soothing repetition for children and insanity-inducing
boredom for adults, and mothers should accept it.

My kids thrived.

I’ve been a mother for twelve years now. The job gets harder every day and I threaten to quit often. I am still learning and am thankful for the untold mothers, strangers and friends alike, who have steered me through it. I owe my mothering expertise to them. Happy Mother’s Day, fellow warriors.

Friday, May 10, 2013

As a parent I
often find myself in a group with other parents. We share horror stories and endure each
other’s bragfests, laugh and shake our heads at the new adventures our kids
enter into each day. Sometimes, a fellow
parent who has kids older than ours listens to our tales, and sagely nods;
they’ve seen it before, weathered the storms in the pulsating sea of kids’
emotions and exploits, and they say: “Just wait.”

Or “She’s going
to give you trouble.” Or “It gets worse,” or “better,” depending on the snark
level of the adviser.

Wait for
what? The walls to cave in at the next temper
tantrum? My kid’s head to spin at the
next outburst? Blood to rain from the
heavens, animals to run for the hills, earth to quake and sky to part the next
time one of my children tests a limit?
What am I waiting for?

In
my mind I have seen the dark side taking hold of my children when I’m not looking, or even
worse, when I am. Will my
kids turn out to be drug addicts?
Murderers? Teen parents? Strippers and prostitutes and pimps? Gang bangers?
Rapists, arsonists, terrorists, or worse yet, politicians?

Whatever it is, I
can guarantee that I am not ready. I was
never ready to have children in the first place. I wasn’t ready to become pregnant either of
the times I became pregnant. I’m not
ready for them to grow up, to experience the things I did, for them to lose one
more shred of innocence.

Each day, the
sight of my twelve-year-old behemoth of a boy entering the room causes me to
stop in my tracks. He is so tall. When did that happen? My daughter, a whisper
before ten, resembles me so much that even I marvel at the similarity in photos. The verbal assaults they unleash on each
other and sometimes on me ring in my ears; I’ve heard those words before, about
thirty years ago, and my blood goes cold.
I remember the bad things I’ve done, all the arguing with my parents, the punishments I received. I was
not a terrible child, and yet my growing up years were littered with tension. This is going to happen here, too.

These kids have
caused me bouts of irrational fear, inordinate amounts of sleeplessness, too
many heartbreaks to count, tears, anger, nights of drunkenness, confusion, frustration,
sadness, exhaustion, and more than a few gray hairs. What else am I waiting
for?

Parenting is
hard, y’all. I don’t need people telling
me to just wait for more. I know it’s
coming. I’m not ready, and I’m scared. I’ve had twelve years of practice, and it is
not enough.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Ahhh, the
crush. Liking someone so much that you
find yourself thinking about them frequently, imagining that you’re together,
or that you’re best friends, or even only that the feelings are mutual.

It’s a step down
from how I feel about Chocolate, Frappuccino, and Paris.

The city, not
Hilton.

Anyway, crushes
are fun if you largely live in a fantasy world like I do. Years full of days speaking little to actual
people will do that to a person. Add to
that society’s infuriating insistence to only converse electronically has
narrowed my contact most days to a few typed messages and pictures shared on
Facebook.

Aaaand that
sounds really pathetic.

So I may as well
keep going.

So, crushes, I’ve
had a few. Here I will focus on
comedians, because comedy is the way to my heart. I’m not sure how my husband got in there,
since he is kind of a straight man. But
I digress.

My first comedic
crush happened in college, and it happened to be David Letterman, what with his
gap-toothed grin and combination of goofy and deadpan and the fact that he
seemed to be confidently aware but not cocky about his gift of the funny. My crush on David could also be the result of
my roommate and I coming home from late nights out to munch on convenience
store nachos to try and ward off the inevitable hangover. Letterman, then in his late 40s, always
topped off a good night. He was
hilarious, a comfort, and to me, so much better than other men in their late
40s. Plus he was always sober and never
hit on us once.

Then came
Jennifer. Jennifer Aniston, while not a
comedian, was the star of my favorite show and I loved her. I associate her with that first wonderful
year of marriage when my husband and I would make dinner, fill up our plates,
lay a blanket on the floor, and watch Friends repeats on TV while we ate. Jennifer’s comic timing always made me laugh
and I wanted her hair, her wardrobe, her smile.
Then she married Brad Pitt and I had dreams about how they were our best
friends. Yes, I said dreams. That means more than one. Today she looks exactly how she did back then,
and though I regard her fondly as I remember that sweet time where I crushed on
her, I wonder if she might not be human.

Recently I adored
Tina Fey. What other woman can write and
star in her own Emmy-winning show, write a bestselling book, receive the Mark
Twain award for Humor, and host the Oscars in just a few years? The girl is on fire. I watched her on SNL, then adored her on 30
Rock, inhaled her book, and laughed with her at the Oscars. This is a case in which my crush became too
much for me to handle, as I stopped watching 30 Rock after a while. Too much, Tina, too much!

The list of
comedians I have a crush on continues with pair of Jimmys Kimmel and Fallon, despite
never having seen either one of their late-night shows. I crush on them from afar, because sometimes
a crush can be so intense that you just can’t get too close, and I ignore
them even though they are funny to me.
Five minutes of these guys is really all I can take. Same type of thing I have going with Adam
Levine, except he is not funny at all which makes him husband material and thus
more dangerous.

Lastly, Sarah
Silverman. She is a comedic crush who I
have almost no knowledge of, except for the occasional video or sound bite. I never watched her show but I think she is hilarious.

Really, when you manage
to be more adorable than Katie Couric, you’re at maximum crush-worthy potential.

Monday, May 6, 2013

It’s no big deal when you are a kid, to not play sports. When you are a kid there are
usually other kids around who don’t play, so you gravitate towards each other
and stand around together and you don’t play sports.

You read books or go swimming or watch TV or ride bikes or
make up games where you are a mom who bosses all the other kids around and they
make an arsenal of mud pies and gang up to throw them at you when you are in
the play house pretending to make dinner for all your brats.

I called that game “The Future.”

But when you grow into an adult who didn’t play sports as a
kid, it can be isolating. Now don’t go
all patronizing and coo in my ear, all, “Oh, who cares. Sports are for kids. So you didn’t throw a ball around when you
were young. Big deal.” It IS a big deal. Because I live in America, people, where sports are a BIG DAMN DEAL. And if you didn’t play them, you are a
weirdo. What’s more, the biggest reason
why I didn’t play sports as a kid was not because I am not athletic. I am. It’s
because I am not competitive. I don’t
care about winning. And when you don’t
care about winning, no coach in America is going to want you on his or her team.

If you’ve played sports all your life, you understand competition,
and see the world in shades of first, second, and loser. Everything is fair game for a battle, every meeting
the opportunity for one-upmanship.

Now look. I’m all in
for being the best you can be, for doing well to get ahead, for presenting the
best part of yourself to the public. This
makes sense to me. It is logical that
when one team gets more points than the other team, that team is the winner and
the other team is the loser. Every game
is a competition. I get it. But I don’t care if I win.

Which makes it easy to play games against me. I do my best, but I won’t go that extra step
to be better than you. Why? Partly because I don’t care, but also partly
because I know that you want it more than me.
It’s how it goes when my husband and I play games. He’s never lost to me. Not once.
Not in bowling, cards, video games, board games. Even if I might be winning, when he sees the
score, he ramps up his performance to get the edge. He’s the guy on the road who speeds up when
he sees you’re about to pass him. And my
reaction is always: If you want to beat me, go ahead. I’ll slow down; you can pass.

This way of life has served me well; not much bothers
me. There is no competition in my
everyday work; no one in my neighborhood is handing out trophies for who has
the whitest bath towels. The Mommy Wars
roll right off my back. I don’t care if
you’re the most Pinteresting mother out there.
There’s YouTube to watch and chores to avoid. Come over and I’ll make you my famous yogurt
and black coffee breakfast.

However, I do wonder if my non-competitive nature is doing a
disservice to my kids. Both of my kids,
because they spend more time with me than their dad, have the same kind of accommodating
attitude, which can slide into nonambitiousness. Which makes it frustrating when we try to push
them to do better. They don’t always see
the value in working harder, in testing limits, in doing better to yield better
results. Sometimes I realize that this
is a hallmark of kid behavior, but sometimes I’m afraid my ultra-cooperative
nature has rubbed off on them negatively.

So what’s a gentle mom to do? Yell “KILL! KILL!” at every basketball game, or
whisper “Sweep the leg” Karate Kid-style when the other team’s pitcher runs off
the field? Should I call them the
dumbest kid ever when they fail to get the best score on a test so they are prompted
to do better the next time, or boast loudly to others in front of them for
getting the best score so they are motivated to always beat their classmates?

Or should I continue to smile at my kids, telling them “Great
work, keep it up” when they do well, and “Man, that stinks, at least you know
where to improve” when they don’t? Because
quite frankly, this is what works for me. Will it work for them? I’m really not sure.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

So I skipped the gym today to write this super-wordy post about my favorite margarita recipe, only to remember at the last sentence that I had written about
it almost exactly a year ago. Darn. Feel free to return there and get the recipe; it's a real crowd-pleaser.

Lucky for you I have another pair of drink recipes that are sure
to knock your socks off.

And if they don’t, have someone nearby who is handy at
taking socks off, because you may need some assistance after drinking a few of
these. Proceed with caution, because each
of them contain Bacardi 151, which as everybody knows means “Loss of Basic Functioning” in alcohol-speak.

Both are fruity and are great for summer afternoons by the
pool. Or mornings as a pick-me-up, if
you’re so inclined. I’ve adjusted
measurements so they can be prepared for parties, because who fixes fancy
drinks for one or two people? Not this gal.
I like drinks that are made for many.

Here we go!

Drink #1: Hurricanes

1 c. light rum

1 c. passion fruit juice

4 c. lemon-lime soda

½ c. lime juice

151-proof rum

Combine all ingredients except 151-proof rum in a pitcher. Stir well, and pour into glasses over
ice. Float 151-proof rum (about 1 oz.
per drink) on top. Drink with a straw to
get the full effect of the 151. Sip if
you like to feel the tingle of 151 on your lips. I swear this is not a pornography site.

Drink #2: Shark
Attack

1 c. tequila

1 c. Triple Sec, or Cointreau if you’re fancy

1 c. 151-proof rum

2 c. orange juice

2 c. pineapple juice

Lemon slices, orange slices, pineapple chunks, maraschino
cherries

Grenadine syrup

Combine all ingredients except grenadine in a pitcher. Stir well.
When mixture has settled, add a few splashes of grenadine. Make a big production out of it, because the
grenadine will sink slowly into the drink and look like blood, which is a yummy thing for your guests to think about at a party. Pour into glasses over ice. Garnish with more fruit if you like. Note: If at the beach, refrain from calling out “Who would like a Shark Attack?” Trust me.

*******

This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #5: Refreshments anyone? Prepare a drink for us and share the recipe!

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

It began when I was small and my hand accidentally touched
the electrified fence that surrounded a nearby farm. One touch sent a jolt through me that causes
me to eye with suspicion any wire fencing that I come across today.

Then I was 18 and living with a family in France for three
weeks as an exchange student. I needed
to dry my hair after a shower.

I studied the metal end of my hairdryer cord that would go
into the metal part of the adapter that came from Triple-A back home. I had never used such a thing but was
confident that it would work just as it was taught the previous weeks in French
class between verb conjugation tests and oral communication practice. I turned the dial on my dryer to the lower
voltage setting, which you could do back in the days sometime between dinosaurs
and Duck Dynasty.

The two pieces of metal found each other in the small, humid
bathroom and I plugged the adapter end into the wall. A shock fizzled from the outlet into the
dryer, into my hand and up my arm. I
dropped the hair dryer and fell to the floor.
My knees failed about the same time the current zapped me. No electric fence had felt like that. Luckily, the hair dryer had come
out of the socket so I didn’t have to handle it again. I took some deep breaths, stood up, and
stumbled out of the bathroom to get some fresh air.

My hair air-dried the rest of the trip.

It’s happened a few times since then. My son got a trick pack of gum for a
gift. Upon accepting an offered piece,
the gum gives a little shock to unwitting recipients. It’s the rudest thing ever.

Electrics have tried to kill me in other ways, too.

Once I came home to an iron my husband had used earlier in
the day and had set out to cool. I KNOW
– my husband irons J. When we
returned home, I grabbed it from the metal side to put away and burned the hell
out of my hand. He had failed to unplug it
before we left and quickly unplugged it when he saw it so I wouldn’t yell at
him about leaving an iron plugged in while we were out. I KNOW.
My husband irons. L

Once our toaster oven caught on fire, just to be mean.

It’s almost enough to make a girl go off the grid
forever. Electrocution, burning, and
electrical fires really aren’t my thing, but I like what electric has to
offer. However, the recent issues I’ve
been having with electrics – specifically, personal electronics – are handily
reorganizing the way I like to do life.

My first iPod was notoriously temperamental. Sometimes it would store music, sometimes it
wouldn’t. Syncing, a necessary evil, was
a guessing game. I still use it on my
nightstand as an alarm. It mocks
me. I reset the volume every day. It blasts full volume without warning.

My new phone stopped working. One day, I could get email and play games and
look at Facebook. You know, I could do
all the things with my phone that the cool kids do.

The next day, I no longer received email, and the Facebook
posts were from ten days before. And
forget about the games. My new phone
couldn’t keep up with the updates. I removed
all the apps.

Then today I tried to get my email. It worked.
After four weeks of no email, now I can get email. It’s a sick game and I am only a pawn.

I opened my Kindle to read Les Miserables, which is the bane
of my existence. I have been reading
this book for months, and it is my opinion that Victor Hugo could have used a
good editor. That man was wordier than a
mommy blogger hopped up on caffeine trying to write about how electrics are
trying to kill her.

The Kindle was dead.
To make matters worse, it resisted charging. Nothing I tried, no cord I
pushed into it, no wall adapter I used worked.
I had just charged the thing two days ago, and used it little since.

I went online to see if this is a regular thing and got
Amazon’s customer service page, which took too long. I had dinner to make and children to run around
the countryside for several hours. I
left the page up on my computer and vowed to come back to it later.

When I got back I feebly pushed the button on the Kindle in
a desperate attempt to resurrect the device.

It turned on. I
blinked at it like it had just insulted my shoes.

It’s then that I realized that I think I’d rather be on the
receiving end of an over-electrified beauty appliance a hundred times than continue
to be subtly manipulated by modern electrics. Give me an electric fence, a burning iron; I
can’t take the mind games anymore.

*******

This post was inspired by my daughter, who advised me to "Write about how you're going crazy right now about your Kindle, Mom." Thank you, darling.